Availability

Location

FSI Contact

Forecasting is a difficult profession. International economist David Hale and writer Lyric Hughes Hale do not claim they can foretell the future. But as veteran observers of the Asian economies, they can envision scenarios that are contrary to current conventional wisdom, and trends that deserve more attention than they are given in the media. What if China and Japan actually engage in armed conflict? Could East Asia experience its own version of the Arab Spring? What would be the consequences of another major earthquake in Japan? When the United States was the dominant power in the Pacific, security interests and economic interests were aligned in the region. Now that China has become the largest trading partner for many ASEAN countries, a new Great Divergence is emerging, with potentially destabilizing consequences. While our national attention has been dominated by the Middle East for a decade now, in the coming era of energy self-sufficiency in the United States, we must shift our focus to the Far East.